Live Code from Eulerroom

“Live coding” is a term to describe the means by which performing musicians write and alter computer software in real time while sound is being emitted and itself impacted by the software, thus deploying code as an instrument. That approach draws a distinction between “merely” utilizing software as an instrument, and using the underlying code of software as an instrument. In this video from Eulerroom, a combination of software tools eke out swells of drones that, as the quarter of an hour passes, get slowly morphed, evolving into more complex and expressive burps and squelches, like life stepping out of a primordial ooze. It’s somewhat intoxicating, in a The Matrix sort of way, to watch the cursor navigate the right side of the screen, changing variables and turning on and off segments of text, and then we recognize the impact of those decisions in the sound we hear.